Just how do we achieve it?
As I write this, I’m thinking of a recent Facebook status by my friend about how there’s a whole plethora of articles, books and even videos about how to lose weight and hardly any on how to gain weight. It’s a real problem that needs real fixing. In the African society, a woman who has a little meat on her is considered beautiful; skinny is related more to emaciation and undernourishment. I am of the latter group. I wasn’t like that until a couple of years ago when I joined university and I shed all extra weight. The crude remarks I’d get, from family especially, was enough to cause me real stress. I seriously thought there was something wrong with me. But with time I did come to accept myself, baby fat is called that for a reason period
There were days I would think of nothing other than how to gain weight. Thus, knowingly or unknowingly, I developed bad eating habits. We skinny people pride ourselves in eating whatever and nothing happens, and that can be dangerous at times. In the exercise world, we are referred to as ‘hard gainers’.
You might or might not know this, but what you eat affects your skin and daily mood (and that goes for everybody). Bad eating habits lead to break outs, sluggishness and a whole myriad of other problems to do with your digestive system. I would like to get it out there though that wanting to gain or lose a little does not mean that you are not confident with the way you are at the moment, it just means that you are in control of your life and can do as you wish, and that you think you can do better. Personally, the only reason I would like to gain a little is because doctors seem to think that my weight is a little less than what it should be for a person my height, it’s nothing alarming though but being clinically underweight, if caution is not taken, is just as dangerous as being obese, if not more.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are the top ways of gaining weight, in a healthy way. I am going to be trying it myself, probably give it like three months.
1. Eat more often than you normally would. First make sure to eat three meals a day, then snack like twice or three times a day. Healthy snacks though, like dates, milk, fruits and vegetables.
2. Good carbs and good fats. Most skinny people have an ‘overactive’ metabolism rate. So eating more calories is key. However the trick to this is feeding on good calories from healthy fats and carbs. Forget about those Sanford or Chicken House fries that have become a daily routine. Those will do you more harm than good. If it’s too much a commitment for you to leave them completely, commit to eating them once or twice a month. There are many, and tasty, sources of good carbs and healthy fats. Healthy carbs can be found in bananas, sweet potatoes, yams, beetroots, oranges, kidney beans, chickpeas et cetera. However, there is a myth that carbs are ‘unhealthy’ and that’s all it is, a myth. I had a friend of mine try to go off carbs, and I’ll tell you this for free, most of the good foods have carbs in them, even apples. Although they should be taken in small amounts, they are paramount to a nutritious diet. The only harmful thing is processed carbs. Good sources of good fat include avocados, cheese, dark chocolate, yoghurt, eggs, coconuts, extra virgin olive oil et cetera
3. Eat more proteins. Proteins are the building blocks of muscles. However you ought to eat them after carbs because they can be really filling and therefore prevent you from eating carbs, which isn’t sensible since we are trying to gain weight, not lose. This goes for your vegetables as well.
4. Exercise. With all the eating, this is definitely a must. Otherwise you will just become fat. However you have to be wise with this. What you want is to build muscle, and not all exercises are meant for that, like cardio; you might want to take that easy since all it does is burn your calories. Exercises such as squats, bench presses, lifting weights are what you should focus on, for now.
5. Other ways include enough sleep and quit smoking
Et bonne chance mes amis!
Thanks for reading
